I have been strict vegan for 4 weeks now. The first 3 weeks felt AMAZING. But now over the past couple days, out of nowhere, I've been getting some rather serious bloating and abdominal pain, likely gas pains.

I'm wondering if there is a way to get rid of this? Or how long will it take for me to adjust?

Could it be that I am just not drinking enough water with all the fiber I'm ingesting?

You might have an allergy to something, so your body may have trouble digesting a certain food. That's my guess anyways.I've heard that gluten can create those symptoms of bloating and pains. I'd also question legumes since those can be difficult to digest as well.I'm a little bit biased against those two things(gluten and legumes), because they give me problems as well (I use to have bloating and abdominal pains).I'd try to figure it out sooner than later though. I unfortunately didn't have the foresight to question my symptoms so I suffered for a long time without knowing why (and maybe did more damage).Try removing certain foods that are questionable and see how your body responds.

stcalico wrote:Too much tofu possibly? It is made of beans - some people forget that.

I don't eat tofu.

Kon wrote:You might have an allergy to something, so your body may have trouble digesting a certain food. That's my guess anyways.I've heard that gluten can create those symptoms of bloating and pains. I'd also question legumes since those can be difficult to digest as well.I'm a little bit biased against those two things(gluten and legumes), because they give me problems as well (I use to have bloating and abdominal pains).I'd try to figure it out sooner than later though. I unfortunately didn't have the foresight to question my symptoms so I suffered for a long time without knowing why (and maybe did more damage).Try removing certain foods that are questionable and see how your body responds.

The strange thing is that it happens randomly though. Some days I can eat whatever and be just fine, and other days I am bloated like crazy. I hardly eat gluten, though I do eat some wheat germ in the morning which has never given me problems before.

cinnamon also helps I think..Have you increased consumption of any specific foods? Could be some sort of food intolerance caused by eating too much of it, so then your body might lack enough enzymes to digest it.

I've talked about this with a number of other new vegans under other headings on this board…

…many of them mistakenly think they have a bean-allergy, but they're really just not accustomed to cooking beans.

Beans of any kind require much more cooking than meat: chickpeas boil for a full hour before making hummus (whereas, yes, I realize that some people make hummus with the beans raw out of the can... and that is a formula for terrible indigestion).

Beans with a thinner "skin" can be boiled more rapidly than beans with a thick "skin" (this "skin" is the part that has evolved to resist insect-predation, and that is hard to digest). Black beans break down rapidly, whereas fava beans are extremely difficult to make digestible at all.

Never eat beans raw out of a can; never eat tofu raw out of a packet; never eat soaked beans raw out of whatever you've been soaking them in. They all require very significant cooking times.

If you're accustomed to cooking meat and potatoes, this may be unfamiliar.

To try something radically different for a while, you can switch to a non-bean source of protein such as Job's Tears [Coix lacryma jobi] --and I assume you'd supplement that with vegan protein powder, as you're evidently into a pretty heavy lifting schedule.

There's really nothing wrong with soybeans, and there's nothing wrong with Tofu --but there is a cultural misconception that these foods can be eaten uncooked. I have been to "Asian" restaurants in the western world that serve some of these ingredients in a format that would be scoffed at in Asia. Canada is pretty much the worst place on earth for this. In Canada, I have seen kidney beans and chickpeas served straight out of the can, and tofu spooned straight out of the plastic packet, etc. --as these beans were equivalent to a piece of lettuce (that restaurants could serve without even rinsing!).

To offer a very different example, I don't think that anyone even tries to digest uncooked Okra or Leeks --but these are, simply, more culturally-familiar foods for most of 21st century western civilization. We know that you can't eat leeks the same way that you eat lettuce --but we apparently don't know this about something as tough to digest as kidney beans (etc. etc.).

maybenot wrote:either that, farmaceutical non-vegan stuff, or letting the gas follow its way to the atmosphere =)

women seem to have more trouble with that than men, we just let it out

hehe, so true. Damn efforts to be ladylike... or maybe it's just because I'm a British prude

Zel - that makes much more sense, I always wondered. I know a few people who just eat beans straight from a can, and then complain of gas. I tend to cook all my beans from dried (actually cooking them in the process, not just soaking) so for budget's sake, so haven't had an issue there. I do have a problem with raw tofu though and avoid it. I never thought of it being like meat.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.—Leo Tolstoy

Glasgow was used in the last film?!? Shows how much of a rock I live under, no wonder some of the locations looked familiar when I was in the cinema - now I need to rewatch it I was living here at that point too. I just assumed they kept the location as Chicago. It is a bit like that though, high dirty tenements and occasional brawls in the street. Gorgeous old buildings and architecture even if it is still rough round the edges.

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.—Leo Tolstoy

Yeah, veering way off topic here, the last time I was in Glasgow the city was full of "post-industrial ruins" that would be suitable for filming any number of post-apocalypse scenarios.

The Glaswegians I've met (by happenstance) since then all insist to me that the city has been completely transformed, and I now wouldn't recognize it, etc. etc.

Back on topic, most of the canned beans that people (foolishly) eat raw aren't cooked before they go into the can: they're dehydrated (in the sun, etc.) and then get re-hydrated in the cannery. This is also why you should rinse off the guck/ooze that they're seeped in (when they come out of the can). There are some pre-made "canned chili bean" type dishes that do contain cooked beans, but they're often balefully undercooked in my experience.

The contrast to meat is also instructive, BTW: our grandparents' generation were accustomed to buying tough meat, and boiling it for hours, but, today, most meat-eaters don't have experience with this type of cooking, nor even this type of ingredient. So to say, "cooking beans is more like cooking meat" would be misleading to many people, as they're accustomed to saute/pan-frying meat for only a few minutes, etc.

In Canada, if your grandparents worked on a logging camp, they were used to boiling white beans in tomato sauce until both turned brown --that's what Canadians call "deep brown beans", but none of the ingredients are brown when they go into the pot. The tradition in both Canada and the northern U.S. was actually to bury the pot (of cast iron) with the coals overnight --so you're talking about a cooking process of more than 12 hours.

Almost nobody cooks anything that way anymore --but much of the traditional cuisine of the world (carnivore or not) relied on long, slow cooking processes, that have disappeared from both homes and restaurants.

Last edited by Zel in France on Tue May 07, 2013 3:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.